1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a conveying mechanism for conveying sheets, and an image forming apparatus incorporating the conveying mechanism.
2. Description of the Related Art
An image forming apparatus such as a copy machine, a printer, a fax machine or a complex machine with their functions generally conveys a sheet and forms a toner image in the housing. Such an image forming apparatus typically comprising a removal mechanism configured to remove sheets jammed in the housing.
A known removal mechanism includes a sheet feeder and a conveying portion, which are connected with each other by a link mechanism, and allows them to be integrally pulled out from the housing. A user may pull out the sheet feeder and the conveying portion from the housing to remove sheets jammed in the housing.
Since the sheet feeder and the conveying portion of the aforementioned removal mechanism are integrally pulled out from the housing, the user may more efficiently remove the sheets jammed in the housing. The link mechanism integrating the sheet feeder and the conveying portion, however, results in increase in size of the entire image forming apparatus. Moreover, appropriate settings for feeding a sheet is likely to change because the sheet feeder is unnecessarily moved, which results in a failure of the sheet feeding process.